This week we're pulling up a chair for Cara Alwill, and honestly, we could have talked to her for five more hours. Cara is a bestselling author, the founder of Pink Ink Press, and the host of Cara Says It All, and she built her whole universe the hard way, starting a blog back in 2008 while trafficking ads in a cubicle at MTV. We get into all of it: how she went from 19 rejection letters to selling 100,000 copies of Girl Code on her own, why she walked away from her Penguin Random House deal and never looked back, and what it actually takes to write memoir about your real life (exes included). If you've ever wondered whether you need permission to do the thing, this one's your sign that you don't.

In this episode, we explore how romance became the bestselling genre in publishing—from its roots in “bodice rippers” to its current dominance on BookTok. Joined by Crystal Leigh, we break down the evolution of romance, the stigma surrounding it, and why readers continue to turn to love stories across every subgenre.